We all know that us humans have damaged the planet with our greenhouse gas emissions (from burring coal and oil and petrol, basically) and we’ve irreversibly changed the climate of the planet.

We also know, unless you listen to Tony who would rather sell more coal, that the global temperature is going to rise by 2 degrees and we can’t stop it but that, if we act now, concertedly and globally, we can stop it rising by 5 degrees.

2 degrees is pretty bad – significant weather change and more storms and crop failures and probably wars and unrest because of it, definitely increased insurance premiums because of all the storm damage.
5 degrees would be terrible indeed – such dramatic climate change that mass human migrations from the low-lying countries to rich places like ours are likely. It’s these consequences that western governments (apart from ours) are trying to prevent by reducing our emissions.

Did you see recently that Costa Rica has produced all its electricity from sustainable sources since December? Pretty cool, eh? They have an advantage in being mountainous and wet and having a small population without much heavy industry but still, it’s a great thing.

This brings me to my point. Global warming and climate change caused by it are here to stay and they are going to be a problem for all of us, even if we don’t have a beachfront house that might get swept away in a big storm.

In our country, we’re likely to see loads more refugees (try stopping those boats) and more droughts and storms and very expensive vegetables, at the very least. We already see an increase in storms and storm damage and droughts are becoming a feature, even as our coastal and tropical areas are ravaged by cyclones.

So what should we do?

Well, my daughter had to do a speech this week on an Australian she admired and she chose Tim Flannery, so I found myself reading his book, The Weathermakers again.

This is what we need to do: BURN LESS FOSSIL FUEL!!

That’s it, no more – stop killing carbons.

We can do it in a few ways:

• Drive less
• Get a hybrid or an electric car
• Use public transport
• Get solar
• Get solar hot water
• Buy green energy from your electricity provider (so they have to buy green energy instead of dirty power from Tony’s coal)
• Travel less
• Turn your aircon off

You’re a business owner. You have responsibilities now. We (none of us) should be sticking our heads in the coal mine and refusing to see what the world (apart from us) can see – that we need to change what we’re doing.

You can get an energy audit done on your business. Here’s a free resource, funded by our Government (http://www.greenwire.com.au/ – I don’t know them, I just Googled it. Forgive me)

My suggestion is that we should all aim to be carbon neutral – i.e. have a net neutral output of carbons.

I’ll do it.

I dare you to do it too.

We’ve only got the one, you know (planet, that is)

Jon